we made it to week 52, everyone

December 26, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that welcomes you all heartily to the precious liminal space between Xmas and NYE 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI haven't lost hope that I will recover enough energy to kick the side of the podcast machinery and get it rumbling to life in early 2023. In the meantime, you can find the show's Apple Podcasts presence here, which includes a back catalog over 150 episodes long chock-full of excellent ridiculousness, including an experimental tabletop RPG and a couple of Star Trek fantasy drafts that could almost be their own show if I had the time to make yet another podcastInstant Band Night 18: RECHARGEI'm going to posit here and now that there may not be a better way to ring the new year in than to do it onstage with a band you've just met, rocking something completely made-up and free from judgment of any kind. We'll see you on January 12; bring a few friends and let's see what we're capable of!!(BTW, you can add it to your calendar (venue address and all) by clicking here)In case you need a refresher: Instant Band Night is a party where musicians who've just met form bands on the spot to play a song they'll write in 5 minutes. If you play music, you can be one of 'em, and if you don't, you can chill and watch. I absolutely guarantee you've never seen anything like it.🎼 MUSIC! 🎼🚀 COURAGE! 🚀✨ CREATIVITY! ✨January 12 20236p$10East Bay Community Space507 55th St 94609(Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  S E E   Y O U   T H E R E  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I'm just going to confess it now: we haven't mailed our holiday cards yet. But we will VERY SOON. It's just been that kind of holiday season, honestly. Covid started a slow but steady march through Mavis's folks one town over (everybody's fine thus far, knock on wood) and it's royally fucked all our plans from jump. We've managed to avoid it as of the time of this writing, so we're logistical support from a distance: cooking and dropping off meals, buying tests, etc. Can we all agree that the Binax tests are weird? Why is it a lollipop, guys? Also, did anyone else here get those tests in the orange box where they gave you the test liquid in its own stupid little "cut the tip off" container that you had to empty into the prep vessel yourself, and it was stressful because they only gave you exactly enough to fill it to the line? The orange box tests used to just give you the liquid inside the prep vessel just like every other goddamn test until apparently some machine somewhere in their factory just went offline for a while; the orange box tests we're getting now have resumed normal service, thank fuck. The things we can complain about in 2022, amirite?I glanced up and realized either nobody's planning a party this year due to some combo of exhaustion/disease/the bizarrely slow and fitful exit from pandemic hermitude with which that so many of us seem to have been afflicted OR we've been left off the invite lists on the assumption that, you know, parenting. Given the number of people I know who now have children, I wouldn't be surprised if the truth is some amount of overlap between those two possibilities. Unless there are others I haven't thought of. Which is possible!! How's your end-of-year looking? Should we think about starting a tradition where us tired people/parents can plan a mellow party that goes until about 10p at the very latest? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.We typically do Xmas in two halves:🎁 First we open presents at home that we've gotten for each other and the kids, then we have a nice breakfast.🎄 Then we head to Mavis's parents' place, where we exchange the gifts we got for the rest of the family; there are usually also presents from the extended family elsewhere that are vectored through Mavis's parents.But this year covid came knocking instead of Santa, so we've decided to delay the second part until everybody's on their feet again, hopefully next weekend. The boys had a very good home Xmas, for which we're thankful.🐙 Quentin's big hit toy-wise was the Octopod playset from ye oldynne Octonauts, which his superhero Auntie Maya found at a garage sale for the tidy sum of $5 months upon months ago. It's impossible to tell whether it's missing anything and I refuse to look it up, although I will note that it's clean, the decals are all perfectly seated, and the moving parts function flawlessly, although the GUP-C seems to be missing its little crane/anchor bit at the rear. Quentin does not care; he loves it. Win!!❔ Felix's big hit toy-wise is either the set of six interestingly-textured balls that he can roll and toss around, OR the empty yogurt container Mavis used as cunningly deceptive packaging for one of the presents she wrapped. He plays with both of these things with equal zeal, and we're all for it. This isn't to say that he ignores his other presents — I'll have to tell you about the big bunny later — but he really does love that yogurt container. Okay!! 

Fascination Corner

I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye. 

  • This is a must-read if you've got any Atlantic clicks left at this point in the month: "The Homeownership Society Was a Mistake: Real estate should be treated as consumption, not investment." (~$Atlantic) 

  • A surprisingly good international agreement for the preservation of biodiversity was nailed down at COP15. (Vox) 

  • The whole Lensa/AI art thing. You know. (Polygon) 

  • "Young adults are struggling with their mental health. Is more childhood independence the answer?" Probably!! (KQED) 

  • A statue of Confederate fuckbag Robert E. Lee that got toppled in 2020 is being replaced with one of Henrietta Lacks. Nice! (Guardian) 

  • The truth about the sounds dinosaurs made, at least as near as The Scientists can figure at the moment, is weirder than you think. (BBC Future) 

  • Huh: the light from outside our galaxy is 2-3x brighter than expected. Where's, uh. Where's the extra light coming from??? (RIT) 

  • Some Engineers have built a flappy-winged robot that can land like a real bird. (EPFL) 

  • Probably unsurprisingly, it seems we're unable to stop ourselves from seeing good in villainous characters. (U of Michigan) 

  • The Scientists have come up with a cancer treatment that, while promising, also sounds sort of bonkers when you hear how it works, in a good way. (U of Tokyo) 

  • Different animals perceive the flow of time differently, and The Scientists have figured out which ones are the fastest. (British Ecological Society) 

  • Why don't polar bears slip on ice, and can we use that knowledge to make better snow tires and boots and stuff? (U of Akron) 

  • If aliens exist — if! — and if they've cracked the FTL problem, The Scientists hypothesize it miiiiiiiiight be possible to detect their ships in transit using gravitational waves. (Science Alert) (Paper) 

  • A whole lot of the carbon that comes from burning fossil fuels and forests appears to end up in the trenches at the bottom of the ocean. (U of Southern Denmark) 

  • The 2022 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are here. (CWPA) 

  • What makes an expert teacher? (U of Warwick) (Paper) 

  • The nets that get strung up off beaches to keep sharks away do a lot of collateral damage; it looks like flying drones over the water in regular patrols actually works a lot better. (Hakai) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumReverse Bokeh, All That is Good Will Escape Us Eventually(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think this band/album sounds like, because now I'm curious) 

Thanks

If you've read this far, I thank you. Feel free to forward this to someone you like, or inflict upon someone you don't.